{Recipe} Spicy Thai Noodles

We served these amazing noodles at our wine tasting.

I pinned the recipe here.  

The original source is here.

I only had to swap out agave for the honey in the original recipe to make it vegan.

Heat over medium heat: 1/4 cup toasted sesame oil and 1/2 cup vegetable oil with 1-2TBS crushed red pepper. **the original poster said she cut this down to 1 TBS of pepper because the original was too spicy.  I only used 1 TBS and it was incredibly HOT (and we like HOT). I also served it warm because I thought it was a hot dish, which made it even spicier. Once it chilled in the fridge, it wasn't *as* hot but I'd still reduce the amount of crushed red pepper used next time.  I'd also use less oil, it came out a little too oily for our taste.** 

Cook for 2 minutes and remove from heat.

I might have cooked it a little longer than 2 minutes.

Boil 1 pound of spaghetti (or pasta of your choice).

Toast some sesame seeds in a dry non stick pan until they look like

this.

Strain out the crushed red pepper from the oil mixture. Reserving the oil. 

To the oil, whisk in 6TBS of agave syrup (or honey) and 6 TBS of soy sauce.

Toss mixture with noodles.

Keep tossing until well coated.

"just keep tossing, just keep tossing..."

Then it said refrigerate until ready to serve. I was making it for dinner and serving it warm so I proceeded with the recipe.

Toss in your mix-ins... 1/2 cup shredded carrots, 1/4 cup green onions and 1/4 cup peanuts.

Sprinkle on those toasted sesame seeds.

I added in some frozen cilantro but then realized my daughter was growing some fresh cilantro outside so I asked her to cut me some.  The fresh cilantro really made those noodles sing!

Toss it all together and serve.

One rogue noodle...

It was delicious served warm (although mighty spicy!).

It was also delicious (and mellowed a bit) served cold and great a few days later.

Linking up with:

Terrific Under $10 Tuesday

Wow Us Wednesday

Whimsy Wednesday

Sugar & Spice

What I Whipped Up Wednesday

Alphabe-Thursday

Just Because

Friday Free For All

Pin It

Teacher Gifts-from my (former) senior

My (former, since Saturday)senior 

wanted to show her appreciation to the special teachers who have helped her so much through the years.

 She put together these travel coffee mugs (from Michael's) for them.

 She popped some Starbucks Via and Crystal Light packets into the mugs,

 along with some hot tea packets.

 She wrote them each a note and attached a photo of the two of them to the note with a cute turtle paper clip.

The finishing touch was some gingham ribbon.  No wrapping! Easy Peasy!

The teachers all told her how much they loved them!

We seem to have a thing for quaffable teacher gifts.  Check them all out here.
Linking up with:
Sunday Showcase

Pin It

Friday Phone Dump Week 22

Happy Saturday! I survived my daughter's graduation today without too many tears.  

It was a beautiful day and hard to believe she's a high school graduate!

row 1*graduation*graduation*with her godmother*

row 2*stained glass in the chapel*Friday night=wine and Whale Wars*my new hair cut & color*

row 3*at the salon*little tootsies*graduation gown at the ready*

row 1*bass lessons from dad*mini cherry pies*storm clouds*

row 2*s'mores*vintage typewriter*hubs' loaded baked potato*

row 3*morning glories sprouting*grad lunch with friend*roasting marshmallows on the fire pit*

Have a wonderful weekend!

Linking up with:

Iphoneography

a good life

Say G'Day Saturday

Insta Friday

Pin It

flipflop Wine Review & Pairings

We were lucky enough to get to do a flipflop wine review recently. 

 We love wine and so do our friends so we invited them over to help us with the review.

We found these wine rating forms on line here.  They were simple and straightforward and helped us along with our 'process'.

I set up the wine tasting area out on our deck and broke out my new Crate & Barrel acrylic wine glasses.

The flipflop bottles are very pretty and I love the fun, summery labels.  I also like the screw tops..as much as I love to collect wine corks, sometimes it's nice to not have to worry about a cork screw.

We also wanted to do some food/wine pairings for our dinner. The wines we were sampling were Pinot Grigio, which goes well with seafood and vegetables, Reisling, which pairs well with spicy foods and Pinot Noir, which pairs well with heavier foods like sausage.

We got the food ready before the tasting began.

 Hubs took over the grilling duties.

He grilled up portobello mushrooms, zucchini, eggplant, peppers and onions for our veggies, also shrimp and sausages.

First off was the Pinot Grigio

which we served with Shrimp on a Stick

 and Grilled Vegetables.

Reisling was next and we paired that with Spicy Thai Noodles (I'll post the recipe soon).

Then it was time for the Pinot Noir

which we paired with chicken sausage and vegan kelbasa.

We rated the wines on sight (appearance of the wine), aroma (smell or bouquet), flavor and overall impression.

We took our job very seriously!  We looked, smelled, swirled and chewed our wines.

Some of the comments for the Pinot Grigio were: dry, light, appropriately acidic, could drink this on the beach, sippable, fruity hints of apple and would be good in sangria. It scored a solid 16 out of 20.

The Reisling received these comments: sweet, sweet but not too sweet, full bodied, just a little heavy overall, like it and simple. It also scored 16 out of 20.  

The Pinot Noir did not fare as well: pleasant but not a wow, thin-tasting, seems flat, light, flabby, short aftertaste, simple and too heavy.  It only scored an 11.25 out of 20.  We were surprised that we all preferred the whites over the red (we all normally prefer reds).

The girls hung out with us and ate dinner with us (no wine for them).  My older daughter made a vegan chocolate tart for dessert.

We celebrated our friend's birthday (are we multi-taskers or what?)

We also had strawberries and cream cheese dip that our friends brought. Yummy!

Later we sat around the fire pit, enjoying the evening (and more wine).

It was a lot of fun!

 

We'll definitely do this again. 

Have you ever done a wine tasting?

Disclaimer:  I was not compensated for this review. I received the wines from Flip Flop but the opinions expressed are entirely my own (and those of my fellow reviewers).

Linking up with:

Favorite Photo Friday

Weekend Wrap Up

Free For All

Sweet Saturday

Sunday Showcase

Pin It